Switch-off a turn-off

Press, 24 January 1984, Page 10

Switch-off a turn-off

By

MIKE CLANCY,

of

Reuter (through NZPA) Farmington, Connecticut Bowling night at the fire station: a dozen men, a couple cases of beer, a few jokes — and a television set blaring in the corner. Family night at the library: a few women and students, some coffee — and a television flickering in the office.

A school night in a nearby home: two children racing down from an upstairs bedroom where they have been doing homework. “We’ve finished, mum. Quick, turn the TV on. The show’s starting.” All typically American scenes. And all signs that a month-long effort by the city of Farmington to live without television is failing. “We’re obviously not getting people to turn it off,” said the librarian, Nancy Desalvo, who engineered the campaign to .get the city’s

16,000 residents to go without television for a month. “I think it’s because many of the parents have grown up with TV. They are complete addicts. There’s no way they could go cold turkey. “People just don’t realise what a monster that machine is. I can’t even get the set off in this library.” Bumper-stickers, posters, letters, notices in the newspaper, and large amounts of publicity were used in the intensive anti-television campaign — to little avail. A writing contest was sponsored with prizes offered to the children with the best essay entitled, “What I did when I turned the TV off.” “I guess we’ll have more prizes than essays,” Ms Desalvo said with a grimace. Farmington residents gave their own reasons for not shutting off the “tube.” At ihe fire station, Bill Lapointe said, “Listen, the thing just comes on auto-

maticany. as soon as the lights come on, the TV gets switched on. There’s no mystery. We like to watch it.”

Another fireman, Brad Meehan, said, “I’m not going to turn it off just because other people do. If you want to find people who have switched off the set, go to the rich part of town. Go to the library.” But at the library the television was flickering away.

“I gave up TV, but I’m not doing very well,” said Sandy Grouton, who works beside Ms Desalvo in the library. “As soon as I come home, I turn the set on for company.”. A psychology professor, Alberta Engvall Siegel, of Stanford University, said in one widely cited study that there were now more American homes with television sets than any other electrical appliance.

“Many more homes have TV than indoor plumbjng.” she said.

Some studies say that televisions are switched on an average of six hours, 18 minutes a day in American homes, and that television takes more time than everything except .sleeping.

Ms Desalvo said that she was disappointed, but took some solace in the thought that people were being more choosey about the time they spend watching TV.

“We’re finding it’s hardest to get the father in the family to switch the set off, but for many people this has served as a reason to evaluate the time they watch and try to reduce, at least,” she said. Ms Desalvo, to the relief of her co-workers, does not plan to repeat the experiment.

“I have to say she’s done a lot of innovative things here,” said a librarian, Roberta Burns-Howard.

“God knows what she’ll do next year. I just hope she does it quietly."